It’s said that you should be kind to your children because they will choose your care home. So you should be kind to middle managers because they translate your messages, frame your communications and interpret your actions. Middle managers make sense of the vision you sell to your organisation and can determine what your leadership means to their staff.
But whereas we know our children well, how many senior leaders could say the same of middle managers?
Often referred to as the ‘squeezed middle’ and famed for trying to face two ways at once – towards their leaders, whom they may aspire, and towards their staff, whom they want to be able to identify – this group has more direct influence over the mood of an organisation than any senior leader, except perhaps the leader of the council and the chief executive.
Why? They know the people who do the customer-facing work intimately and know how to fire them up and dampen them down, when needed.
Crucially, if middle managers are to be part of the means through which you are leading the transformation, they need to be both aligned with your view of the world and emotionally committed to it.
In the great sweep of massive change, it may feel easier to take your message straight to the people. So leaders will get out on the road with vision speeches, internal campaigns, blogs, vlogs and the whole charm offensive.
In the heat of the moment, powerful leaders can shift thinking, win hearts and change minds. But when staff need to make sense of it all, they will invariably look to their managers, people who will not only know them but have supported them through thick and thin.
But it’s not just the emotional relationship that underpins effective staff/management relationships. Middle managers who are aligned to the corporate vision will be able to pitch the message in the right way at the right time so each member of staff can be teased on board.
More, they will be able to take account of the critical factors – timing, location, levity, seriousness as well as the mood and state of mind of each recipient – that will determine whether staff will go willingly into the new world, or be dragged reluctantly.
Those who go willingly, who feel supported, will continue to perform despite increased uncertainty. Those who are cajoled and forced to accept the crunching nature of organisation contraction, will lose faith and performance in equal measure – and very quickly.
The key to honing broad messages so as they can make sense to each member of staff is in trusting middle managers. The future is personal. While each worker may mither about the state of the organisation in a philosophical sense, they will be deeply concerned about what it means to them personally. Mortgages and children’s schools are not philosophical products.
But having middle managers’ support for your plans or vision is not a foregone conclusion.
How well do you know your middle managers? Do you know what makes them tick? Do you know what they want to achieve? Do they feel supported or thwarted? Do you know how they make sense of the world? And, importantly, do they rate you – do they have confidence in your leadership? Where would you score on a scale of zero to ten?
The chances are you haven’t asked them. Like most people you probably assume you have their confidence and respect. It’s not hard to find out whether they do. All you have to do is ask them. The trouble is, you may not want to hear the answers so you will trundle on assuming they are behind you.
But if they are lukewarm about you, your vision or your abilities, then that may frame the way they deliver your message. ‘I’ve been told to tell you’ is not an uncommon phrase at times of change.
Nor can you ignore what could be your leadership credibility gap. Without middle managers’ support, organisations can soft pedal change – opt out and wait for it to happen rather than embrace innovation or new ways of working. The real loss will be felt in the quality of services you are able to deliver when the organisation is going through flux.
Getting middle managers on board needs more than a few coffees with the chief executive. Understanding their challenges, their pressures and their ambitions will get you some way there. But importantly, knowing how they see the world, the values and how they judge people like you could determine whether you can get them on board at all.
But if you can’t, then the chances of getting their staff to buy into the smaller, lean, lithe, fast-moving, co-producing, enabling future will be far slimmer.
Mark Fletcher-Brown is a strategic communications advisor